Out on the round

A driver opens Bottle on the phone in the cab. They get their own round and nothing else: not the customer book, not what anybody is paid, not the other vehicle. The office plans; the driver drives and says what happened.

This page is Bottle in the phone’s web browser. Most drivers use the Bottle app for iPhone or Android instead, which does the same round the same way and keeps working without signal. In the app, loading comes first (Load the van, then I have set off), a Load, Out, Back strip shows where the day is, and a Next drop card is always one press from directions. See The driver app.

When a round appears

Nothing appears until the office sends it. You get an email saying you have a round for that day, with how many drops and which vehicle, and the round shows up when you open Bottle. If one disappears again, you will have had an email saying the office took it back.

The list is the page

Rounds opens as a list of drops in the order they are to be done, each with who it is for, the address, what they want and roughly what time the vehicle should be there. At the top: which vehicle, how far along the day is, and when the round should be back.

With more than one round on the same day, a button for each sits under the heading, named by the vehicle and when it leaves. The page opens on the round out on the road, or else the next to go, and the list, the map, setting off and loading up are all for the round chosen.

Map is a tab off it rather than the page itself. A driver already knows where they are; what they need is who is next. The map is there for the drop that is hard to find, and it shows where you are as well as where the drop is once you allow the browser to use your location.

Loading up

Load up is the loading screen, top to bottom in the order you do it.

First the drops, in the order they come off, with the last one marked Deliver last because that is the one to load first and put out of the way. Tick each drop as its bottles go on.

Then Extras: anything going on that no order asked for. A couple of spare 19kg for the doors that ask while you are there is normal, and so is a bottle nobody ordered. Everything the business sells is there to count from.

Then What is on the van: every bottle the day needs and how many are on so far, climbing with the ticks and the extras.

The one thing said about placing is weight, and it is said as the reason rather than the rule: heavy bottles low and over the axle, because a ton of propane riding high at the back changes how the van handles. Whether that means the bulkhead or the rear is your call and your yard’s.

Saying what is on the van

That is everything on saves the total of the ticks and the extras, and that is the figure the yard’s stock is taken from. Not the plan: the plan never loaded a van in its life. Drops not ticked are said so, and you can save anyway if they really are not going on; the office sees the round was short. Change a tick or an extra afterwards and Save the changes, right up until you leave.

Pressing I have set off without having saved asks for the count there and then, starting from what the orders need. After you leave, what left the yard is what left the yard; the only change left is Add more stock.

More on the vehicle, partway round

Once the vehicle is out, Load up shows Add more stock, for the trip back to the yard, or the call at the supplier’s, because the doors have been asking. It lists everything the business sells, with what is already on board beside each. Count what you have just put on and Add to the vehicle. It is added to the morning’s load rather than replacing it, and comes off the yard’s stock the same way.

Setting off

I have set off at the bottom marks the round as out. Until that is pressed, nothing can be ticked off: a round still being planned in the office is one where the stops may yet change, and a drop marked delivered against it would be a drop against a sheet that no longer exists.

Either the driver or the office can press it, whichever happens first.

Navigate

Navigate is shut until you have pressed I have set off. Otherwise the first thing that happens is a driver opens Google Maps, drives away, and nobody has been told they are coming, least of all the customers waiting for their two-hour window.

Once you have, Navigate on any drop offers Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze. Pick whichever you use and the phone opens it with the drop already in it. The choice is there because every driver has a favourite and it is not ours to pick.

Where the office has dropped a pin for the address (the side gate, the cellar door), directions go to the pin. Where there is no pin, the maps app is given the full address to find rather than a point worked out from the postcode: a postcode can put you at the wrong end of a long lane, and the maps app finds a house number far better. The iPhone and Android apps do the same.

Addresses with delivery times

Where an address can only take a delivery at certain times, the round tells you how it looks from where you are now, not from the plan made this morning.

Under each drop still to do: when you would get there, and whether that is fine, tight, or too late. Pressing Navigate says it again before the map opens, because that is the moment you are about to drive twenty minutes.

This uses your phone’s location, so location needs to be on. Without it the round says nothing rather than guessing.

While the round is out, the last position your phone sent is kept, a few minutes old, and a customer whose drop is still to come sees it as a van icon on their tracking page next to their own address. They see nothing else: not the other drops, not where you go after theirs, and nothing once the round is back. It is the same answer you would give if they rang and asked “are you close”, without the phone call.

Cannot make it

On a drop you will not reach in time, press Cannot make it today on the navigate screen. It comes off your round, the order moves to the next day that address is open, and the customer gets an email apologising and naming the new day. Nobody waits in for a van that is not coming.

At the door

Each drop still to do has two rows of buttons. The top row is what can happen at a door before it is written up: Navigate, Wants more and Take payment. The bottom row is the answer: Delivered or Not delivered. Do them in that order and nothing has to be undone.

Wants more

The customer sees the van and asks for a third bottle, or for something that was not on the order. Wants more is for saying so before any money changes hands, so the price you quote and the link you make are for what they are actually taking. Each line can go up; Add a product not on the order opens the rest of what the business sells. The new total comes from the office’s prices, and Update the order grows the order there and then, cancelling any bill or link for the old figure. It does not show on an order that has been paid: a settled bill is a record, and more for that door is a new sale.

Take payment

Where a customer pays at the door, the drop shows what is owed before you park, and Take payment asks one thing first: Cash or Card.

Cash is said in words, not a box to edit: Paid £108.00, Paid some or Not paid, with a line underneath saying what each does. Paid in full marks the order paid and you are carrying the notes until the office counts them in. Paid some asks how much they handed you, and the rest stays owed: a twenty against ninety is twenty taken, not a settled order. The button says it back, Save: £108.00 cash taken.

Card shows a code; the customer scans it and pays on their own phone, so the card details never pass through you or through us. The sheet waits, and says Paid £108.00 by card when the money lands. There is a link to copy for a phone that will not scan.

On a drop that owes money at the door, Delivered waits for the money question to be answered: cash taken, card gone through, or Not paid chosen. Press it too early and it says Take payment first. Choosing Not paid opens the drop up and the proof sheet starts from it, so a customer who will not pay can still be delivered to when that is the business’s call, but nobody hands gas over with the payment simply forgotten.

Nothing appears for a customer who settles with the office, or for an order already paid. Money taken before the drop is written up stays exactly where it is when it is; a drop that is written up without anything having been taken still asks about cash, in the same three words.

If you took the notes after writing the drop up, or forgot to say so, the drop keeps Take payment after it is done. Once the money is in, the row says what was taken and the button becomes Change cash, for the figure typed wrong.

What you took today, and everything you still have to hand in, is at the foot of the round and on your overview. The second is not the same as the first: if you have been out for four days, it says so, because that is the figure the office will ask you about.

Delivered

Delivered asks how the drop is proved, because a delivery nobody can prove is not one worth recording. Two ways, and the driver picks whichever happened. Where nobody has taken the money yet on a cash drop, it asks about that too, in the same three words as Take payment, and the green button says what saving does: Delivered, £108.00 cash taken or Delivered, not paid.

What actually went

The sheet opens with the whole order ready to go, because that is what happens at nearly every door. Where it is not, the plus and minus buttons say what really came off the van.

Hand over less than the order asks for and the sheet asks why, because the answer decides what happens to the rest:

• Not on the vehicle, or damaged cylinder: we deliver the rest another day.
• Customer refused it: the rest is cancelled and the customer gets a refund.
• Something else: the office decides what happens to the rest.

The row shows “2 of 5 delivered” either way. It is not a delivery and it is not a failure: the customer has some gas, and what happens about the other three is settled by the reason.

Anything wrong

Anything wrong? is optional and folded away. Wrong product on the vehicle, access difficult, customer complaint, something else, with a line for the office. For things that went wrong while the delivery still happened.

A damaged cylinder is not on that list, on purpose. By law it cannot be sold, so it never arrives: it is the reason the order was short, recorded once, above.

Proving it

Signed for: the customer signs with a finger on the screen, and the driver types who signed. Both are needed. A signature with no name against it settles nothing six weeks later.

Left in a safe place: only when the customer had already asked for it to be left. The driver photographs where they put it and can add a line about where. The photo is required; that is the whole of the proof.

Nobody in

Where the customer has said what to do if nobody answers, it is on the drop before you knock, as a dark pill with the detail beside it: Safe place behind the side gate, Neighbour number 14, or a red Do not leave. They say it from the tracking page linked in their on-its-way email, or the office types it on the address. Nothing shows where nothing was said.

The pills on a drop are the things to know before the door opens: the time, what is owed, what to do if nobody is in. Everything else about the drop sits under them in plain text.

It is their request, not an instruction. A cylinder is worth taking, and “behind the bin” on a busy street is not somewhere to leave one. If the place does not look right, keep it on the van and mark the drop Could not: the customer has already been told, on the page they asked from, that this can happen.

Either way the row goes green and the office sees it immediately. The customer gets an email, and the one left in a safe place carries a link to the photograph so they can see where to look without ringing anybody.

Where only part of the order went, that email says so: what actually arrived, and what is still to come. A customer told “delivered” who then counts two cylinders instead of five is a customer on the phone.

When customers hear from us

Twice, and only twice.

When the vehicle sets off, everybody on the round gets a two-hour window, in a box of its own at the top of the email, because that is the thing they are arranging their morning around. The window is centred on the estimate rather than starting at it, because an estimate is the middle of a guess. Drops in the second half of the round are told a window a break later, since that is when the driver will take it. Said once: pressing I have set off again after losing signal does not tell forty customers twice.

When their drop is done, they get the delivered email. It lists what arrived, says what is still to come where only part of it went, and carries the signature or the photograph in the message itself rather than a link to go and find. Nothing is sent for a drop that was not made: the office decides what happens next, and an automatic “we did not deliver” email arriving before anybody has looked at it makes that conversation worse.

A customer with no email address on their record is skipped quietly.

Could not deliver

Could not asks why, as five buttons rather than a keyboard: nobody in, could not get access, customer refused it, wrong address, nothing left on the vehicle. Something else is there so nobody picks a wrong reason to get past the screen. A note is optional, for the thing worth saying that no button covers.

What happens then matters: the order is not cancelled. The customer still wants their gas. The reason is recorded against that drop on that round, and the order goes back to waiting, so the office can put it on another day or another vehicle. What happened at the door on Tuesday stays a fact about Tuesday.

Undo is on every row that has been answered, for the thumb that slipped.

Selling from the vehicle

Somebody flags you down, or a door wants more and their order is already paid. New sale at the top of the round asks three things: who, what, and how they are paying.

Who is a name. Type two letters and the customers that match come up with their address; pick one. Somebody with no account is Someone new: their name, and where you are if it helps the office later.

What is the products and a count. Priced at their agreed rate where they have one, else the list price.

How they are paying is Cash, Card or On account. On account is only open for a customer whose account allows it. Card makes the payment link and the invoice straight away and shows the code to scan, so the customer is paying before you have put the phone away.

Add to my round puts the sale on the end of the round as a drop like any other. It is delivered, proved and paid for the same way, and the office sees it as an order sold from the van.

Undoing a drop

Undo puts a finished drop back to being not done, and asks first: it takes the signature with it, and any cash recorded against it.

Back at the yard

Once every door has been answered, the button at the bottom becomes Back at the yard and closes the round. Until then it says how many are still to do, so nothing is closed with a drop forgotten in the back.